#2827: Dave Farnsworth

David Christian Farnsworth is an Arizona state senator serving since 2013 (with a break between 2021 and 2023), representing District 10. Farnsworth is a creationist. When Arizona was considering a Darwin Day resolution in 2016, Farnsworth was dismayed: he would, he said, have supported an Arizona Science Day (like many creationists, Farnsworth pretends to love science), but a Darwin Day would be a very different matter: “When I was growing up in Mesa, I was taught in school the evolution theory that my ancestors came from monkeys. Personally, I was offended by that theory, especially when you consider that I hold a deep-seated belief in creationism.” Science might be cool, but doesn’t trump Farnsworth sensibilities as an arbiter of truth, especially when it comes to issues Farnsworth doesn’t begin tounderstand. He also pointed out that it would be fairer to teach both evolution and creationism, both as theories, in public schools, since again, science should be held to no more rigorous standard than the standard of what Farnsworth feels is fair.

 

Of course, Farnsworth is an across-the-board loon. As a Mormon, Farnsworth is a firm defender of that characteristically Mormon piece of deranged pseudohistory idea that Mormonism was founded by followers of Jesus who settled in the US right after Jesus’s death (the Nephites) but who were killed off by heretics whom God subsequently punished by darkening their skin (the Lamanites). But more generally, Farnsworth is an all-in religious-fanaticism-fuelled conspiracy theorist ranting about “secret combinations” (Mormon for conspiracies) that “will seek to destroy the freedom of all lands,” which are currently “the insiders, One World Government people, the socialists” of the modern world – Farnsworth is fond of quoting John Birch-society affiliate Ezra Taft Benson (“If you want to know what I believe, and how I feel, just Google Ezra Taft Benson. Because I don’t disagree with anything he ever said”) that “there is no conspiracy theory in the Book of Mormon – it is a conspiracy fact”. So there. Benson, who believed that Black people were “the seed of Cain” and therefore couldn’t have positions in the church, and that the civil rights movement was “a Communist program for revolution in America”, famously wrote the foreword to this book.

 

Farnsworth has also claimed that QAnon is a “credible group”. Indeed, he received some attention in 2019 for his claims that the Arizona Department of Child Safety is involved in sex trafficking, specifically that the DCS would arrange for the children to be abducted and sold into a global sex trafficking ring: “After several months of digging, I am quite confident that there is a connection,” Farnsworth told the QAnon-promoting website Epoch Times. He did not cite any evidence, of course. He also affirmed that “I think most knowledgeable adults believe that there is a sex trafficking ring all across the world.” He did of course not cite any evidence for that claim either, for obvious reasons. When his fellow state senator Kate Brophy McGee told him to stop holding meetings at the Capitol with “unbalanced” people (Farnsworth’s QAnon friends), Farnsworth promptly called the police and claimed that she had threatened him.

 

Farnsworth returned from retirement in 2023 (with Trump’s endorsement) after his primary opponent (Rusty Bowers) had decided to testify before the January 6 committee and had also strayed from what Farnsworth considers church doctrine by holding a hearing on an LGBTQ nondiscrimination bill (Farnsworth judges homosexuality to be a “lifestyle choice”). Even more importantly, Bowers hadn’t, in Farnsworth opinion, done enough to “ensure faith” in Arizona’s electoral processes after they failed to ensure that Trump emerged as the state’s official candidate: Farnsworth doesn’t only believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump through fraud, but that it was a Satanic conspiracy, that the “devil himself” was behind it. His evidence is (exclusively) that “in the book of Mormon in Ether Chapter 8, the synopsis of the chapter says … modern gentiles are warned of a secret combination which seeks to destroy the freedom of our lands”, adding that “this is larger than any of us, because every tyrant that ever lived has been inspired by Satan to take control over the hearts and minds and souls and bodies and lives of mankind.” When pressed, he did add that “I felt that the election was stolen” and that Dinesh D’Souza’s laughably fact-challenged conspiracy movie 2000 Mules “reinforces how I already felt”. And the conspiracy is wide-ranging; Farnsworth liberally accuses political operatives working for his opponents or media coverage he feels is favorable to his opponents of being part of the conspiracy and “working for Satan”. His candidacy was promptly endorsed by a sufficient number of frothingly insane Arizona wingnuts (like Kelly Townsend, Andy Biggs and Kelli Ward).

 

As for Covid, Farnsworth was very frustrated with government efforts to halt the pandemic, in particular its effects on churches: “If this is a real epidemic, why wouldn’t we be fasting and praying that the Lord would turn it aside, rather than going after the solutions of men? Which is a shot that probably does more harm than good.” Yes, you can be confident that if it has been uttered by Dave Farnsworth, it is not only wrong but fractally so.

 

Diagnosis: As Rusty Bowers put it, Farnsworth “doesn’t invest intellectual capital” – and that’s a … generous characterization. Possibly one of the most deranged loons in the US today.

 

Hat-tip: Business Insider